Sandra Hill (22 page)

“King Edgar…and the ealdormen of the Witan…did not accept his stories?” Eadyth asked running her fingers through the thick hair on his chest. Almost fifty years old, her husband was still a devastatingly handsome man. And he could still thrill her in the bed furs.

“Keep looking at me like that and I will not be able to answer,” he said with a chuckle, not at all displeased. “The king ever was Blackthorne’s bosom friend. Well, actually, ’tis Blackthorne’s son who is his comrade. But some on the council were swayed by Archbishop Dun
stan, who counseled treading carefully. Dunstan is not one to be bullied…by anyone.”

“Dunstan! He was there?” Everyone knew that Dunstan had been the power behind the throne ever since he’d been called from exile three years earlier. “That wily weasel in monk’s garb!”

“That wily weasel in monk’s garb will be coming to our yuletide festivities, along with a whole contingent of Saxon nobles. They claim to want a personal audience with Lady Esme, but methinks they just want to lie about swilling your famous mead.”

“Here?” Eadyth shrieked. “They are coming here. Oh, Esme will die. And, Toste…oh, good Lord, Toste!”

“Interesting that you should mention Toste. I spoke with a priest who came from the minster in Jorvik, and he said Sister Margaret arrived there with one of our stableboys, not Toste. And no one has seen him anywhere.”

“Ummm…Eirik, there is something I must tell you.”

He sat up abruptly, alert to his wife’s nuances. “What are you up to now?” He knew her so well.

“It is not me who is up to something. It is Esme.”

“Esme?” He shook his head like a shaggy dog. “Why must you always confuse me? Speak plainly.”

“Toste. Kidnapped by Esme. Woodcutter’s hut. Tied to bed. Naked.”

Within seconds, Eirik was pulling on his
braies
, laughing heartily. “I cannot wait to see this. Finally the rogue has met his match.”

Laughing his arse off…

In another bedchamber several doors away, Alinor was sitting atop her husband’s stomach. Naked, the way he liked her.

Tykir was splayed out, arms and legs extended, panting for breath. Sated well and good, the way she liked him.

“Tykir, heartling, there is something I must tell you.”

His eyes cracked open a bit. “Uh-oh. I suspect trouble is on the way, especially when you call me heartling whilst sitting on my limp cock.”

“Tsk tsk tsk!” she chided him. “’Tis about Toste.”

“I already know about Toste. Gone missing, he is.” He proceeded to tell her about meeting the priest from the Jorvik minster.

“Not missing, precisely,” she told him. “Actually, he is here at Ravenshire. Never left.”

“Really?” He frowned. “I did not see him when we arrived.”

“Well, he could not come to the hall.”

“Because?” he prodded her.

“He is tied to a bed in the woodcutter’s hut, naked,” she said in a breathy rush.

“Stop talking in riddles. Who did this to him?”

“Esme.”

Tykir gaped at her for only a moment, then burst out laughing. He laughed so hard that his manpart jiggled inside her woman-place, which caused her woman-place to clasp and unclasp him, which caused him to make love to her another time, the whole time laughing. Once they were both fully dressed and preparing to leave the bedchamber, Tykir said, “I cannot wait to see this.” He was still laughing.

Out in the hallway, he met up with Eirik and Eadyth. Eirik was laughing, too. Downstairs, they told the story to Bolthor, who started laughing, too.

So, it was quite a hilarious entourage that made its way down the still snowy path to the woodcutter’s hut. Bol
thor was already composing a saga. In fact, he said he expected to get two or three poems out of this happenstance.

Just before they opened the door of the hut, Eirik squeezed his wife’s shoulder and said, “Methinks this is going to be the most lively yuletide season we have had at Ravenshire in years.”

Sweet revenge…

Ten days of captivity and Toste was grinding his teeth once again at Esme’s stubborn streak. Despite all manner of threats, she just would not release him. He was running out of torture ideas.

“Stop chewing on your fingernails,” he snapped. “There will be none left for me to pluck out. And your whistling is not melodious, believe you me.”

She looked up from her chair by the fire, which she’d been gazing at pensively. And continued to gnaw nervously on her thumb. “Eirik and Tykir and Bolthor should be home soon, now that the weather has turned warmer,” she commented. Water could be heard dripping steadily from the roof into a rain barrel outside. “Dost think the news will be bad for me?”

“The news will be bad for you no matter what the Witan has decided.”

“How so?”

“Even if they rule in your favor, you will have me to contend with.”

“I had no choice, Toste.”

“Oh, you had a choice, m’lady. I know of no other noble-born woman who would have done what you have.”

She shrugged. “If a man had done what I have, people would have said he was justified. Why must women be treated differently?”

“Because women
are
different.” He told her explicitly how they were different.

She ignored his crudity and asked of a sudden, “Have you ever been in love…with a woman, I mean?”

Nay, only with men. By thunder, she insults me even when she doesn’t try to
. “Nay. Why do you ask?”

“Methinks that if you ever loved a woman the way you loved your brother, well, that woman would be very fortunate.”

“Are you trying to win your way into my favor with compliments? Forget it!”

“Nay. I am just making conversation.”

“Are you a virgin?” he asked, figuring she wasn’t the only one who could change the subject at will.

Her eyebrows shot up with surprise. “Yea, I am. Why would you think otherwise?”

“A woman who is so doggedly determined to get her home back at any cost might be tempted to use her body as a bargaining chip.”

“Like a prostitute? That is what you think of me?”

“Absolutely.”

He saw tears well in her eyes at his insult, but he did not care. The woman had unmanned him with her trickery. She was a whore, if not in actuality, then in spirit.

They had no chance to pursue the subject further because there was a commotion outdoors. Then all hell broke loose. His own personal hell, that is.

Eirik, Tykir, Bolthor, Eadyth and Alinor crashed into the small room. The men’s heads touched the low ceiling. All of them were bunched close together gaping at the
outrageous sight of him tied to a bed with only a fur pelt across his middle to cover his nudity.

All five of them just gawked for a long moment. Then slow smiles crossed all their faces.

Without his usual introduction, Bolthor burst forth:

“Good poem!” Alinor said.

“So, how are things going, Toste?” Eirik asked, sitting at the bottom of the bed. “Anything new happen whilst we’ve been gone?”

“Dost think we can play this game when we get back to the keep?” Alinor asked Tykir.

“We’ve already played this game afore,” Tykir reminded her.

Alinor didn’t even blush as she replied, “Oh, that is right. Now I recall.”

“Sarah and Sigrud would like for you to dance with them at the yule feast, Toste. Dost think you will be up by then?” Eadyth inquired sweetly as she batted her lashes at him.

“He is too old for the girls,” Eirik told his wife.

“That is what I told them,” Eadyth said.

“Does anyone want to hear another saga?” Bolthor asked.

“
No!
” they all exclaimed.

“Do not dare to go through that door,” Toste ordered as he saw Esme edging toward escape. “Bolthor, block her way.”

Of Eirik he demanded, “Cut my ties.”

When he was standing free, uncaring of his nudity, he ordered all of them, “Out! Except for you, Esme. You will stay.”

“Now, Toste, do not be too hard on her—” Eadyth began.

“You will not interfere in this, Eadyth,” he told her. “Nor you, Alinor. This is betwixt me and her. Begone!”

Both Eirik and Tykir led their protesting wives away, and Bolthor followed, chuckling and no doubt composing a dozen verse poems, all at Toste’s expense.

Within seconds, he was alone with Esme in the hut.

He could have put his
braies
on at this point. He should have put them on. He did not. He wanted to intimidate her with his nudity, or anything else, for that matter.

To give her credit, she did not cower in fright. Instead, she raised her chin defiantly, ready to take whatever punishment he would deliver. She was either very brave or very dumb.

He moved toward her.

She sidled away from the door, closer to the fire.

He leaned back against the door, folded his arms over his chest and crossed his ankles. Then he just stared at her.

She did her best to look back at him, but only above the waist.

What to do with the wench?
Well, actually, he had ideas aplenty. The question more accurately was: What to do with her
first?

“Take off your clothes, Esme,” he said so softly that the ice in his voice could barely be discerned.

“What?” she squawked.

“You heard me. Take off your clothes. I would even the battlefield here—for the first time in ten days, I might point out.”

“You can kill me with my clothes on,” the obstinate witch said. “I do not mind if you bloody my gunna.”

“Take…off…the…damn…clothes.”

“You don’t have to yell,” she muttered as she began to disrobe.

Yell?
The gall of the woman. He would say she had a death wish if she hadn’t depleted her lifetime supply of death wishes by her vile treatment of him these past ten days.

She’d already taken off her surcoat and gunna. She stood before him in a chemise thin enough to show her thigh hose underneath. “You’re not going to kill me, are you?”

“Not right away,” was all he would disclose. Actually, it was all he knew at this point. He waved a hand for her to continue disrobing.

While she lifted her chemise over her head and bent at the waist to roll down her hose, she remarked, more to herself than to him, “I may as well take my final vows as a nun, since it appears you will not be helping me to regain Evergreen.”

The sight of her standing now, nude and absolutely
glorious in her beauty, took his breath away. When he was able to speak, he said, “M’lady, there isn’t a convent in the world that would take you when I am done with you.”

She tilted her head to the side in question. When she understood his words, a flush swept over her face, down her long neck and over her breasts, which were full, rose-tipped and glorious. Her gaze fixed then on that part of him which was especially appreciative of her bodily charms. “You would rape me, then? That is to be your method of punishment?”

“There will be no rape.”

She exhaled on a sigh of relief.

“But there will be sex. Lots of it.”

Her eyes shot wide. She appeared about to say something nasty to him, then thought better of it. “So be it,” she said, lifting her mulish chin. “Let us get it over with so I can get on with the rest of my life…whatever that will be.”

She walked grimly over to the bed, like a Christian to the lions’ den. She should be quivering with fright. She should be begging him for mercy. She should be apologizing till she was blue in the face for what she had done to him. That was what he wanted of her. Wasn’t it?

Within minutes, she was spread-eagled on the bed, just as he had been, arms and legs tied to the bedposts. He would not bother with the gag because no one would defy his wrath by coming to her aid, even if she screamed…which she did not. Instead, she just stared levelly at him, awaiting his next step.

Some men might feel guilty for shaming a woman so. He did not. His wounded pride and thwarted plan to avenge his brother’s death rankled too much.

He dressed himself and pulled a chair near the bed. Rubbing a hand over his mouth, he studied her. He was aroused by her nudity, of course. What Viking worth his salt wouldn’t be? But he was in control of his senses and would not assault her while his temper roiled. In truth, he would not assault her at all, despite his fury. He would couple with her at some point, though…that he knew without a doubt.

“Are you not even curious as to the Witan’s decision?” he asked finally.

He saw the shock that overtook her. “Yea. Of course. Oh, Blessed Mary, how could I have let such an important thing slip my mind?”

“Well, you were distracted,” he remarked.

“Go. Find out,” she demanded.

He had to laugh at her nerve. Bare-arse naked and trussed up like a chicken and still she ordered him about. “I will go when I am ready.”

She made a tsk-ing sound of disgust.

“I have been thinking—and, yea, I have had plenty of time to think—about your situation with Evergreen. I understand your overpowering drive to regain what is rightfully yours, but why would your father, a wealthy man in his own right, care so much for such a small estate?”

“Greed?”

“Greed goes only so far. There must be something about this property that makes it valuable to your father. Ponder the question whilst you lie in the bed you have made for yourself.”

She curled her upper lip at him.

He soon uncurled it when he reached over and touched one nipple with a forefinger. It immediately peaked, as
did the other one. Two obedient soldiers standing to attention…his attention.